Tomato harvest

Last week I picked 5 kilos of tomatoes for our freezer. (This is what I’m reduced to by the end of the season when bottling and chutney making has overwhelmed me). Its so simple, pick tomatoes, wash off the bugs and dirt then stick the tomatoes in bags in the freezer. Come winter you can throw a handful of frozen tomatoes into your stew or curry and away you go. Sorry, but no, you can’t defrost them to slice for your sandwiches.

The other important harvest which also happened at the same time was tomato seed collecting.

We had lots of tomatoes this year, but the one that I really wanted to save seed from is the small, darkish-looking tomato sitting just above and to the right of the Wapsipinicon Peach tomatoes. This tomato appears to be a cross between a Black Russian tomato and an egg tomato. As often happens it was self sown, from seed in our compost. It’s small but boy does it have a great flavour.

My friend E also gave me a selection of her tomatoes to try.

I’ve chosen to save some seed from the Tigerella, which we haven’t grown before, and the Black Russian.

To save the seed I let the tomatoes go a bit rotten and then squeezed the seeds into some water to help float some of the pulp off.

Next I washed the seeds in a sieve, under running water to get rid of the remaining pulp.

Finally I put the seeds onto plates to dry, making sure I kept track of each lot of seeds ready to be packed away for next season.

Put the dried seeds in envelopes for storage.

Just after I’d set them on paper toweling to dry, I heard a gardening commentator say put the seeds on a plate to dry, no paper needed! This makes the seeds easy to pack away. Oh well live and learn!

Hi Christine
I think tomatoes just like to grow together. We plant ours a reasonable distance apart and without fail they seem to grow into a tangled mess by the end of the season. I do try and nip out the side shoots when they are first planted to direct the vigour into growing fruit, but I always seem to forget to do it after the first month.